Do you want to know how to get a NEAT butt?

This is perhaps one of the most forgotten hidden secrets of the naturally lean! NON-EXERCISE ACTIVITY THERMOGENESIS!

What?

Ever wondered why some of your friends just stay skinny and seem to eat all the time?

Have you ever noticed how they don’t sit still?

Ever sat next to that annoying person tapping their toe or pen in a meeting?

Ever wanted to tie that fidgety child to a chair in the doctors waiting room?

Have you ever thought that this could be the secret to staying naturally thin?

NEAT in a pistachio nutshell means that when you are jiggling around, tapping that toe, getting in and out of your seat, walking around whilst on the phone and waving your arms while you are talking you are actually burning extra calories in a non-exercise setting!

So how can this make a big difference to your body weight? Surely it doesn’t add up to that many calories?

Well let me put this into context. NEAT is highly variable. In people with sedentary lifestyles it only burns 15% of total calories consumed during the day. However, for very active people – those people who can’t seem to sit still – it can account for nearly 50% of total daily energy expenditure!

Let’s break down your daily energy expenditure:

Your BASAL METABOLIC RATE (BMR) is the energy your body uses just to stay alive – so laying down and sleeping. Nothing else. Sedentary people BMRs will be much lower.

A small amount of energy is used to digest food! Around 10-15%. So for those who don’t eat often this can be lower, especially chronic dieters!

The rest of your daily expenditure is down to either exercise (planned exercise such as the gym or sport) or non-exercise activity (NEAT).

So that brings me to the question – what can YOU do to increase your potential for a NEAT butt without having to go the gym more? Well I have some ideas to get your started:

At periodic intervals throughout the day, schedule some 30 sec to 1 min bursts of exercise. Such as skipping on the spot, high knees, running up and down the stairs (carefully). Just 4 mins of this throughout the course of the day can equal a 20 minute intense walk.

Use the stairs at all opportunities! So deliberately parking at the top of the multi-story. Or using the toilet on the floor above you at work. Walking around whilst on the telephone.

Get up during all the advert breaks on TV and do some press-ups or sit-ups.

Fidget in the queue – practice standing on one leg.

When at work stretch intensively at the desk, twist, reach, circle your shoulders, turn you head. Try and do it every hour – it will help increase flexibilty and promote concentration too!

If working at home. Stop everyone now and then and do a household chore – like put the hoover round or sweep the floor.

Keep changing position in your work chair. Sit up straight and hold your tummy in!

Visit the water fountain every hour. Better still use the one furthest away.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil do some lunges and squats.

Get a pedometer to measure your steps and try to increase them each day until you get over 10,000! Then add a new goal!

What others can you think of?

It may not seem like much but over the course of days and weeks this extra activity and calorie burn can make a huge difference. Just 100-200 extra calories a day could equate to around 10 lbs of fat lost in a year!

When you also incorporate interval type training into your scheduled exercise routine you become better at burning fat at lower intensity exercise such as NEAT – so attending Metabolic Effect classes or doing some high intensity sprints for example will help accelerate your fat burning potential!

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Jill Gardner

Every diet I tried made me more miserable, more depressed and eventually fatter.

Every diet was simply focussed on trying to punish myself thin by depriving myself of nourishment and burning myself out on the cardio machines.

That was until I discovered a different way. Instead of hating myself and looking at food and exercise as calories I started to look at food as information and my body as an amazing machine that needed love, care and the right fuel.

And so begun my amazing journey to becoming a fat controller, banishing the beige and creating a fat controlling method that can help you too.